Machine translation
In the past few years, machine translation has become more established in the industry, although it hasn’t replaced “traditional translation”. Instead, an additional tool has been developed for language service providers.
Machine translation has not yet prevailed in medical and pharmaceutical regulations, but there are text and document types for which machine translation is already worthwhile.
If you are planning on using machine translation, it is sensible to take preparatory steps now so you can benefit from more advanced technology in the future.
mpü offers a wide range of solutions for machine translation. We are able to both tailor the solution to your needs from a technical perspective and scale it to the pending volume of translation.
Whether you need a trained engine or a stock engine, we’ll find the right one for you.
Machine translation engines
Translating with a trained translation engine
Sample run with 15 different engines
Do you want a solution that is tailored to the translations you’ve had done in the past and your glossary? We would be happy to train and evaluate up to 15 different engines to determine whether they are suitable for your specific content. In this way, you can be certain that you achieve the best results for your language pair and your content.
Once an engine has been selected and trained, you can of course continue to train it with your new content. We can train your engine with the newly created translations at agreed intervals so you get better results in the long term.
When is your own trained engine an option?
- If you already have large translation memory corpora.
- If you will have to translate a growing number of texts in the future and this volume will need to be translated into as few languages as possible.
- If your technical editorial team drafts texts in a way that makes them suitable for translation.
Translating with a standard engine
If you have a smaller translation database or a smaller volume, it’s not worth training your own engine. Of course mpü can also evaluate which stock engine is the most suitable for your types of text.
Even if it’s not worth the cost of an evaluation, we are happy to advise you about the common engine, their advantages and disadvantages and the prices.
Machine learning – with high-quality input from mpü
Machine translation and post-editing processes
Of course mpü offers more than just simple machine translation. With our post-editing packages, you can tailor your texts to the needs of your target audience.
File preparation
Before the start of any machine translation, the text should be checked to determine whether it is suitable for machine translation.
The most important criteria before the start of the translation:
- Was the text written in the author’s mother tongue?
- Are there any existing translation memories that can be used for pre-translation?
- Has the text been written in a way that makes it suitable for translation?
Before starting the MT, the file is imported into our CAT tool and automatically segmented by the tool. The segmentation is briefly checked by the project manager to determine whether it’s suitable for machine translation. As many segments as possible are then pre-translated using the existing translation memory and accepted. These segments are locked and not machine translated.
The machine translation is then run. Depending on the process that’s required, one of the following post-editing steps is then used.
Post-editing processes
There are various post-editing processes available according to ISO 18587:
Light Post-Editing
Here at mpü, we decided against offering translations of this light quality.
A quality that ISO 18587 says results in an “understandable text” is not part of our range of services.
Standard Post-Editing
First and foremost: post-editing is not revision.
The goal is to make the text as understandable as possible without engaging too significantly in translation.
Incorrect content is corrected, but there is no particular focus on grammatical nuances.
If the content of the target text is correct and understandable, the post-editing has fulfilled its purpose.
The purpose of post-editing is to save time and money compared to other methods.
Post-Editing + Revision
This process was inspired by one of our customers. Once the translated text has gone through standard post-editing, it is subjected to a further revision by a second technical translator.
- The source text is only considered here if required,
- but parts of the translation that are hard to understand or formulated in an awkward way are corrected.
- Terminology, style
- and major inconsistencies are addressed.
The text quality improves significantly, and you can use these texts for a wide range of people.
Is machine translation right for your texts? We can advise you.
Price and speed
Machine translation and post-editing can be practical tools and not just for the reasons that are often mentioned. Speed and price are very important but the immediate availability can also make process automation easier.
By talking to the business units involved and conducting some test runs, you can work with mpü to quickly determine whether machine translation is suitable for your projects.
If you are interested in machine translation, we would be happy to analyse the texts together with you. We advise you on whether machine translation is worthwhile for your company and which type of machine translation would be best suited.
